The Harvey Girls

Off-beat comedy - think Molière with a dash of the Coen brothers ...

It's an ordinary day at the Harvey House Restaurant along the Santa Fe Railroad in Las Vegas, New Mexico

The 20th century is just a couple of years away, and the six people on the staff of the restaurant are engaged in their usual struggles ...

Mary wants to run things because she's smarter than the others

Effie takes her on at every turn, in the meantime waiting impatiently for her boyfriend who hasn't showed up in three months

Whistle, a young native girl, thinks the white people talk too much and eat entirely too much

Miss Mecham wants them all to remember that women with jobs are much better off than women with children

Raul, the young Mexican kid, thinks the whites are loco

And Bachmann, the German chef, makes rules that few people follow

That's the ordinary part of the day

Then we get word that there's an armed woman roaming around, having been a part of a train holdup earlier that morning

Mary is terrified, Whistle oblivious, but Effie's so curious that when she meets the armed woman, she invites her to apply for a job as a Harvey Girl

Mixed in with all this are the strange and wonderful people of the town ...

Swamp, a fast-talking shyster who makes money selling stuff he doesn't own

Glitterman, a studious miner, who knows one day he will hit pay dirt

Stella who reads a lot of books, wants to be a Harvey Girl, and eats free at the restaurant because she has no parents

Shudder who runs a herd of sheep all by herself because she has a past that includes murder and she knows they're after her

Pillage, a Civil War vet, who needs a job and freedom from his nightmare of dying in a swamp with a hundred injured horses

Miss Longtree, a retired actress who speaks in verse

And finally, Godlee, a preacher man, who believes the end of the world will come tonight

And it seems he's right ...

Single interior set - runs about 80 minutes
HA1